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To: unclewest who wrote (21276)	6/1/1999 11:06:00 AM
From: richard surckla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

1999 Computer Hardware Predictions... infohq.com These are the hardware/software innovations we foresee for the coming months.. New CPUs By the end of the year, speeds of desktop processors will be in the 700-800 MHz range. Larger and faster on-board memory caches will be used to boost performance at higher speeds. These innovations will be released in two competing CPUs this Summer; the Intel PIII with Coppermine technology and the AMD K-7. Intel Pentium III with Coppermine Technology- This CPU will be released in September at speeds of 533 and 600 MHz. This will be the first PIII with 256KB on-board full-speed L2 cache. Like its predecessors, this CPU will have the 70 SSE multimedia instructions which have been tested to provide between a 20-60% graphics speed improvement. AMD K-7 - This CPU will be released at the end of June at speeds of 500, 550 and 600 MHz. Like the AMD K6-2 and K6-3, it will perform well in business applications. It is predicted to contain the same 3DNow multimedia instructions as its predecessors, which are totally outclassed by the Intel SSE extensions. Hopefully, AMD will take steps to improve this deficiency before the CPU is released. Editor's Comment: We are seeing more and more signs that AMD is having trouble producing K6-3 CPUs in quantity (please see our May 16, Sunday Shopping Watch story located in our News and Rumors page). In addition to seeing a lack of advertising of new computers that are based on the AMD K6-3, we have also noticed that few secondary suppliers have any K6-3 CPUs for sale. We can only conclude that AMD is having severe manufacturing problems, or they are ramping up to produce the K-7 and have no factory space left to produce the K6-3. While we believe AMD will launch the 500 MHz K-7 in June, we feel it is highly unlikely that the K-7 will be available in quantity for several months. (For a full discussion of future CPUs, please see our article Intel Pentium III Vs. The Other Guys – What you need to know about CPUs in today's market.) New Motherboards - AMD's future K-7 (due out in June of 1999) will not fit in current motherboards. The K-7 will use a Slot A motherboard (similar to, but not compatible with, Intel's Slot 1). Intel's Camino chipset (see next paragraph), due out in September, will also cause you to buy a new motherboard. New Chipsets - Intel's new Camino (820) chipset will appear around September with support for at least three features: high-speed Rambus DRAM, 4X AGP graphic card slots, and the 133MHz front sidebus. - AMD will produce the first chipset for the K-7. Future DRAM Intel's Direct Rambus DRAM (D-RDRAM) will appear in desktops in the Fall of 1999. The Camino chipset has 100 MHz and 133 MHz bus speeds, allowing PCs to come with 600 MHz or 800 MHz Rambus D-RDRAM. IBM backed double data rate (DDR) RAM will be used for servers. Server manufactures like the higher density of the DDR (64-bit and 256-bit) over the Rambus 16-bit density. DDR RAM is also appearing on video cards like ATI's Rage 128. PC133 SDRAM - Designed to run on the future 133 MHz system bus. Due to the problems and delays manufacturing Direct Rambus DRAM, memory manufacturers are now making PC133 SDRAM. The PC133 SDRAM will most likely appear on lower priced computers until Direct Rambus DRAM becomes more affordable. High Speed PCI Bus If we see any change in the PCI bus it will not be until late in the year. Intel's new PCI bus replacement - Next Generation I/O (NGIO) is not due out until 2001. Meanwhile, the PCI Special Interest Group is pushing its PCI-X specification which is a new implementation for 64-bit PCI that allows speeds up to 133 MHz and is due out late in the year. Video Cards - Video cards will continue to have greater amounts of RAM to display 3D graphics and textures. We will definitely see a flock of new 4X cards released when the new chipsets become available. Graphics rendering speeds of video cards may double. Universal Serial Bus (USB) Will continue to increase in popularity. All newer computers will probably have at least one USB peripheral connected by the end of the year. USB 2.0 due out mid 2000, will increase USB speeds from today's 12 MB per second to speeds of 120-240 MB per second. DVD R/W - As read/write DVD drives become more standardized, sales will increase and few will want a CD, DVD player/writer, or Zip drive. Windows 98 - Microsoft will soon release its Windows 98 second addition, and another "unnamed" consumer version of Windows will be released sometime in 2000. \| Top \|Computer Buying Advice\|InfoHQ Homepage\| \|Asking a Question - How it Works\| Ask A Question \| \|Copyright© Notice\|